The three o’clock highway ran silently through the grassland and through grey fields that were mostly fallow now. At the eastern entry to the roadhouse was an eternally empty noticeboard to advertise goings-on in nearby towns and Grey leant against it. The Milky Way stretched farther and brighter than he had ever seen it and the sky was washed out with dirty twinkling.
He switched off the inside lights and the neon criers at the main and sat down on the gravel by the road, and then he and the roadhouse were lost to an oblivion of stars and plain. He thought that the dark that enveloped the land was the same that God divided on the first day, and it had not grown a moment older or changed, no matter how many lights men shone into it, and in that eternal dark nothing was certain. Grey wondered where she was tonight, if she was with he who he had loved since boyhood–or was it some other after all? It was better to have no idea. It was better like this, out here away from it. He tried not to think of her and instead he thought of Vanessa. He wondered how long she would be in town. She had asked about him tonight. Perhaps he had been unkind to her, been foolish. Again tonight, far out in the west, the land was burning. The fire nipped at the southwestern stars and held him. Then he thought of her without being able to help it. He spoke her name to the dark, to the empty distance between himself and the heavens. At times God seemed on the verge of speaking across that distance, but the word was always withheld, or was whispered and not understood, and he wondered was the universe holy and meaningful, as the ancient saints had it in his mother’s books, or was it all just a tawdry, banal and violent nothing, like this highway, where the pretty glare of lamps made the earth a depthless plane.
It was six o’clock. A red front stretched the length of the eastern horizon to counter the front in the west. The western front retreated and failed in a haze of smoke. He sat before the roadhouse with his eyes closed and his head between his knees below the ever-fading remnants of last night’s universe.
ECCLESTON SAT ALONE IN HIS HOUSE. HE HAD TALKED with Possum through the afternoon and marked the place with pen on a road map. Now a candle sat on the windowsill and he watched the jumping flame. He looked for the hundredth time in the night across the way to the North house. He saw her in one of the lit windows. Then the lights went out. It was very early morning. He watched the candle twisting and the wax burn down and the flame glow and glow and then go out with a ribbon of black smoke. He got in Possum’s bodytruck and drove out to the big highway and drove west.
VIII
THE NEXT NIGHT GREY ATTENDED THE SHOWGIRL’S crowning dance with a vague hope of seeing Vanessa. He scanned the hall for the boys but they were nowhere amidst the small crowd. With a fifteen-dollar cover charge and no beer at the bar, he reckoned they would not be coming. He had asked Matt Thiebaud who had given him a doubtful “maybe’. He could not see Vanessa either. She had attended this party in years gone. But why should she be here tonight? He took a glass of red wine and laughed at himself. He nodded to Jack Harry, who would not be here but for his plain young cousin who was one of the showgirl entrants. Grey decided to finish the glass and leave when the voice he recognized spoke close to his ear and her hand fell on his shoulder.
“So they’ve let you out, have they?”
He smiled at the meaningless quip. She was smiling too, that credulous, indiscriminating smile that lit her face like a ray of warming light. He realized what a long time had passed since he had seen her. She gave him such physical relief that he sighed and breathed deeply, as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. She had lightened her hair and it hung loose over her ears and touched her neck, and the kerosene lamplight showed her skin to its fullest golden hue. She was beautiful. Grey remembered her birthday had passed since he had last seen her. Even in those months she seemed to have grown up.
“You must be twenty-two now.”
“Twenty-three, Grey. You don’t remember anything, do you?”
He remembered their first kiss. They were sixteen and thirteen and she had just taken her first drink of blackberry wine. He had stolen the bottle from his father’s cupboard. It was the sweetest-smelling thing he could find and she said it was blissful and felt a little like cheating, drinking alcohol that tasted so good. He remembered the excitement of having a girl, of her already swollen body that made his loins sing with a strange pain, and the way she spoke and held his hand that seemed so wonderful and grown up. That was the night he decided to marry Vanessa Humphries. He knew he was only one of a number of boys she had played at love with. Even so, he always felt he had the edge on the others, that when she had exhausted them she would return to him, or somewhere within arm’s reach of him, and they would pick up where they had left off, and he had long been justified in this feeling.
“So how are things?’ she said. “I haven’t seen you for so long.” She spoke without any of the awkwardness or spite he had been prepared for, that he thought his inexplicable disappearance from her life deserved.
“I’ve been around. What about you? How’s school?”
“Only half a year to go. It’s very exciting.”
He nodded. He imagined kissing her tonight, sneaking away laughing into the dark, climbing into one of the rooms of the schoolhouse beside the hall.
“No big news then?’ he said.
“Well–I’ve gotten engaged.”
“Oh.” He felt cheated. “When?”
“A couple of weeks ago. It happened quite suddenly.”
He stumbled over his words that he saw made no sense: “I’d been meaning to call you.”
They looked at each other with embarrassment until, unable to hold her gaze, he glanced away across the room at the blurred faces of the crowd.
“Now don’t pretend you were ever serious about us, Grey.”
He sighed.
“ Why not? Who is he?”
“You don’t know him. His name’s Michael Reed. He works on a newspaper in the city. He’s just over there. He and his family wanted to see where I grew up.”
Grey looked across the room and found the tall man she pointed at. He was talking with a smartly dressed woman who bore sufficient resemblance to him to be his sister and who was cradling a child.
“Your mother must be happy.”
“She is. Though she’d be happier if it was going to be at the Presbyterian. Michael doesn’t want a church wedding.”
Grey nodded. He saw the chain around Vanessa’s neck now bore a heart-shaped locket.
“Come and I’ll introduce you!”
“In a minute,” Grey said.
And all at once he was not talking to her anymore. She had said goodbye and walked across the hall. He lost her in the crowd. He saw her next standing at the edge of the dance floor with her fiancé’s sister, having relieved that woman of her child. Vanessa rocked back and forth and side to side, lulling the child in her arms to sleep, her figure hinting at itself as if by accident through her pretty beige dress. The child was not hers, but to see her cradling an infant on her hip, where her own would be after a few short years had passed him by, hurt him.
Later he spotted her alone in a corner of the hall. He went to her and caught her hand and held it. He could see the discomfort it caused her, but he did not let go. This–Vanessa and all that went with her–was real and good. If he could hold onto it he might make something real of himself also. So he kept hold of her hand despite her protests.
“No, Grey,” she whispered, her eyes darting around the room, “I can’t.”
“Is he giving you trouble?’ said a red-faced young man in a sports coat who was even drunker than Grey.
“No, Tommy. I’m fine.”
Vanessa pulled on Grey’s arm. She scowled at him and pulled free. He walked out to the car park and stood alone next to his truck without getting in. He sucked the cold air in long draughts until he was almost sober. Then he stood shivering in the blue light at the top of the hall’s stairs for everyone to see. She went out to him.
“ Why don’t yo
u go home, Grey? You’re tired,” she took his hand, “and look, you’re cold.”
Her fiancé came out to them.
“Who’s this?”
Grey ignored him.
“That’s the one I told you about,” said the sports-coated drunk who joined the miserable party on the veranda. “The one who was giving her trouble before.”
“Get out of here.” the fiancé said. But Grey did not move or stop staring at Vanessa. “I mean it. Get the hell out of here, you dumb hick!”
Grey ran his hand over his face and laughed.
The fiancé thought it was at him. He pushed Grey and Grey tried to hit back but missed and fell backwards down the stairs. The next he knew, he was lying in the car park and the fiancé was kicking him on the ground and Vanessa was screaming for it to stop. Grey managed once to get to his feet and was knocked straight back down.
He sat on the dirt against a car wheel with a buzzing head. People were talking all around him but he heard nothing they said. Then someone had their arms around his shoulders. Then he was sitting in the back seat of Vanessa’s car watching the fiancé where he stood on the veranda of the hall. Grey was dazzled by the headlights of cars that were pulling away, carrying people to the showgrounds and the melancholy annual cabaret.
AT THE SHOWGROUNDS Grey felt better and apologized and even thanked Vanessa for the lift. Vanessa was crying into her hands.
He saw Matt Thiebaud sitting on the grass, listening to the band.
“You look like hell!’ said Thiebaud.
“Thanks for showin up at the dance.”
“I was goin to. I’m gettin bored with this here anyway.”
“Let’s go somewhere then.”
“Where?”
Grey almost suggested heading north to Kilcoy, but then he remembered they were not welcome in that town on account of Eccleston’s last trip there. He did not want to go back to the bars and poolrooms in Mary Smokes.
So they stayed where they were.
The band played on a truck deck. The steel guitar, squeezebox accordion and violin played a long and ebbing tune. The crowd was thin and scattered. Thiebaud and Grey sat up close to the truck. Grey watched the bonfire beside the trailer, children skirting the edge of the flames. A small boy poked, touched, pulled away with too hot hands, then grabbed quickly and held a bit of wood burning at one end and circled the fire letting sparks fly behind him before throwing the wood back. A merry-go-round turned at the edge of the plain.
“What are we doin here?”
“What do you mean?”
“In this town.” Grey breathed deeply and closed his eyes. “I’m twenty-five years old.”
“We’re makin our way.”
Thiebaud took out his pouch and pinched the tobacco and rolled Grey a cigarette and then rolled one for himself.
“But I know what you mean, Grey. I know what you mean, all right.”
So they both felt it tonight. Their tribe, the wild boys of Mary Smokes, was failing so suddenly.
“What have we been fighting against?”
Thiebaud looked into the dark. The burning end of his cigarette glowed against the outskirts of town that might as well have been the beginning of a howling waste.
“I don’t know,” he said.
What they had been fighting was uncertain, but both boys knew that somewhere in the night, even at the asking of the question, they had lost something unnameable and irrecoverable. Time overflowed with lost tribes. Why should this one of a half-caste, a simpleton, two poor boys and one’s arcane young sister be different?
The band left the stage. The boys’ sad reverie was broken by the end of the music.
“Where’s Ook tonight?’ said Thiebaud.
“Where is he ever, lately?’ Grey drew on his cigarette. “Did I tell you I’m thinkin of moving to the city?”
“And that you were goin north to get work on a trawler.”
“Did I say that? I might do. Next year.”
“I don’t much like the idea a workin three months straight.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“You don’t mind now. Wait till you’ve been doin it for a month.”
“You’re just lazy, Thiebaud.”
“That’s true.”
They sat quiet again, listening to the bonfire. Talking about future plans with someone who believed in them made Grey feel a little better, and the emptiness inside him grew smaller.
“It’s town’s big night tonight, isn’t it?’ Thiebaud said.
“And tomorrow night.”
Thiebaud dug a hole in the ground with the heel of his boot.
“But I know what you’re sayin, North. Tell the truth, I am gettin sick of this same old thing year after year. I feel it most now in the winter.”
Their home was sedated through the long months of summer. It slept and dreamt, waking suddenly in May when the air was filled with expectation and the chill promise of escape.
Grey wondered what would happen to Raughrie Norman if he and Thiebaud left town. He mentioned this. The two boys decided Eccleston would never leave Mary Smokes.
“Same work and no work, same people, same joints every year,” said Thiebaud. “Runnin round here after whatever girls haven’t moved away yet. I’m leavin town, all right. Get myself set up a bit.” He took a long drag of tobacco and blew it out the corner of his mouth. “One day we’ll all be set up, you see. You will and I will, and even little Irene will.”
Thiebaud could not hold Grey’s gaze. He looked away, then back at his friend, and then Grey knew that he knew; that the secret of his sister was no secret at all.
“I think Ook loves her, Grey. I don’t say that’s right or wrong. But then he told me he found her on the road the other night talkin to some boy. Probably some poor kid from school. I don’t know who it was, but I think Ook might. Last I saw him he told me he was sortin it out. So perhaps he’s leavin her alone.”
“He should have told me.”
“I think he wanted to.”
“And she … Does she–?’ He turned his eyes to the ground.
“I don’t know. She’s strange, Grey. You know that. Once Ook thought she did. But she told him some other had made her a promise. Probably the boy he caught her with. I spose kids make promises to each other all the time. You shouldn’t be surprised. She’s the prettiest girl anyone’s ever seen. Someone was bound to fall in love with her one day.”
Grey shut his eyes and sighed deeply.
Thiebaud put his hand on Grey’s shoulder.
Grey wondered who the boy was. At once he felt the need to drive home and secure his sister and then find Ook and go wherever was necessary to put an end to this. But then he let it pass. There was nothing to do but let it pass. There was nothing to do but accept. Despite her solemnity and strangeness, she was a child, at times a childish child; just a girl who would one day be a woman. And the other? Some poor rosy-cheeked boy in her class at school who had spoken to her gently, or even if it was Eccleston she cared for most … Either way, a boy she admired. Someone who treated her as a regular girl: the daughter of her father; the possession of no one but herself. He felt guilty. So guilty he convinced himself he must be satisfied without knowing who the other was.
Thiebaud put his arm around Grey’s neck and shook him.
Though he could not force a smile, Grey felt someway pacified. What had been happening with her these last weeks, this must be the natural way of things. It must be. And there was nothing truly wrong. It was a girl’s right to grow up, however awkward and ungentle the process might seem. So he had been inventing it all. That part of him that had been growing into the monster in the woods and at the house with her, that wanted to fight against everything no matter what damage it caused, that part was burning him out so quickly. And that was what they called childishness. There was comfort in the knowledge it would eventually pass. The world would forgive him his youth, so long as he outgrew it. Now he must harden himself to a new degree to be equa
l to his inheritance.
THIEBAUD DROVE HOME and Grey walked the minuscule sideshow alley by himself, wanting to hold onto the armistice in his heart a little longer. After he had walked the alley twice and there seemed nothing he could do to prolong the night, Jack Harry came and slapped his back.
“Guess what I just saw?”
“What’s that?”
“Vanessa Humphries and that bloke who hunted you outta the dance hall before. Over there behind the marquee near the sideshows. And he starts tryin to press her up onto the wall of the thing and she hit him! How about that, eh? Bloody hell, did she hit him!”
Grey smiled.
“It’s just coquetry. She’s playing.”
“Hey? Nah, nah, she hit him. Did she hit him! Anyway, that’s just deserts. Son of a whore. Comin to get a beer?”
“I’ve been drunk once already tonight. The second time’s no fun.”
Jack Harry shrugged and left him, and Grey decided to take one last wander about the night’s diminishing entertainments. Anticipation had taken hold of him and was spoiling his peace. Without admitting it to himself he was looking for her. He found her standing before a stall of grinning clowns and grotesques. Under the stall’s orange light a showman watched her little brother place ping-pong balls into the mouth of a clown. When the balls were gone the boy turned around pleading. Vanessa forced a tired smile and gave him a handful of coins to play again. She looked very sad. She saw Grey and sighed and looked down at her shoes and then took her brother’s hand.
“Come on, Billy.”
Grey followed her off the sweet-smelling sawdust, out of the alley and through the horse floats and caravans where wood smoke hung above the cold flat. They were back behind the closed pavilion in the dark, the place where she supposedly hit her man. She stopped and they stood staring at each other. She let go of her brother’s hand. She turned around and looked like she was going to cry.
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